Buscot Theatre

Tags

Buscot Park, Cotswolds, John Piper, Oxfordshire, statuary, urns

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart  All Rights reserved

… the final one very John Piperish.

Musical Theatre Collage

Tags

collage, musical theatre

 

 

George Bernard Shaw’s House

Tags

George Bernard Shaw, Hertfordshire, Shaw's Corner

 

Portrait is of his wife, Charlotte.  National Trust, Herts

 

                     House a bit gloomy.  Garden in last week’s post.

Shaw’s Corner, Hertfordshire

Tags

Ayot St Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, Hertfordshire, National Trust, Shaw's Corner

 

Garden of George Bernard Shaw.  Now NT

Today- photos copyright candiacomesclean.wordpress.com

Gone Missing

 

Weird!

I posted this image of Samuel Beckett on my site last year.

It had quite a lot of ‘likes.’  I can prove it is my work as I

have the original painting.

Today I have been trawling through my site to find it

and it has disappeared.  I wanted to show it to someone after

a photography programme on television last week mentioned

my friend, Jane Bown, who took the original photo, on which

I based my painting.

What’s going on, guys?  It feels like it could be the subject of a

work of literature.

If anyone else can find it on my site, please let me know!

Friday Clerihew

Tags

Ken Dodd, OBE

(KD at the stage door of The Royal Centre,

Nottingham, 27/12/007. Photo by Ian Brown)

 

Sir Ken Dodd,

even as a child I found you somewhat odd.

Nevertheless, how very tickled you must be

to have finally been awarded an OBE.

Snodbury

Tags

Antarctic krill, catharsis, compund eye, convergent evolution, Dianetics, Hornby, le mot juste, Rev Awdry, Ribena, Salsa, Scrooge, stirrup cups, Tree of Life

(Compound Eye of Antarctic Krill: Wikipedia.  Photo by Gerd Alberti and

Uwe Kils)

 

Snodbury was actually his mother’s surname, he believed.

She had waltzed off to Venezuela, following her political dreams

and had settled down with a salsa musician, producing his half-

brother.

Aunt Augusta ( Editor:In Retrospect May She Rest In Peace and Rise In

Glory!) had deposited him, as a confused four year old, in St Birinus’

Pre-Prep Department, where he might have turned into a pre-pubescent

Scrooge, given that he was often forgotten at half terms.

It was not the first time that Gus (Snod) had had the distinct sensation

that someone was standing behind him whilst he was shaving.  Through

the condensation he wondered if, like another sweet young prince, he was

about to encounter his ghostly father.  There were more surprising things

in Heaven and Earth, he was sure.

He felt that it was not entirely down to thespian self-delusions that he

could summon up a vague remembrance of an encounter with a man

called Arthur in some school holidays.  The visits were etched on his

consciousness as they were marked by the gifts of a piece of Hornby

kit and a Rev Awdry book.

Aunt Augusta would collect him and take him on the train all the way

to Kent and then they would take a taxi to Wivern Mote.

His aunt and Arthur would sit round the fire in the converted stable block,

drinking mulled wine, if it was a Christmas Holiday, and gin and tonic, if

it wasn’t.  He remembered the odd silver cups from which the wine had

been imbibed.  They had embossed foxes’ heads on them.  He had been

drinking Ribena from a tooth mug and had asked about them.  He

remembered now: they were stirrup cups, he had been informed.

When it was time to go, he had to shake Arthur’s hand with his own

mittened fingers and he grew to anticipate the half crown that would

be passed into his woolly palm.  It was never a two shilling piece.  He

could tell, without looking- which would have been rude-just by feeling

the milled edge.  Yes, Arthur had been generous, if enigmatic.

It wouldn’t seem long before he was back to the security of school- that

same establishment to which he had dedicated not only the best years

of his life,but the majority of them.  The only noteworthy hiatus was

when he had studied Classics at university and had then returned like

the Biblical dog…

The toilet paper he had licked and stuck to his shaving nick fell off.  He

hoped the wound would heal more quickly than the childhood scars he

was well aware of bearing into advanced adulthood.

‘Catharsis‘- that was le mot juste.  If he could only lance the boil of his

carbuncular life, he felt the bloodletting would be beneficial.  There had

been so many toxic infections visited upon him in the course of his

school-masterly life.

He laughed to himself:  Pus in Boots!  This was the way his tangential mind

roved around, seeking bad puns.

Yes, Dear Reader, the exploration of the life and times of this apparent

nonentity will be the very means whereby he may be purged and brought

to a hopeful re-birth (but not in any Dianetical way, I assure you.)

By tracing his twig’s development on The Tree of Life, by exploring

different starting points, he hoped to arrive at the identical solution: himself.

The Biology teacher had explained convergent evolution to him, but I won’t

bore you with an elucidation now.

He had also wished that he could see the world through a compound eye-

to see himself as others saw him and to see himself more clearly.

Perhaps with ocular enhancement he would avoid any more shaving nicks…

Boris (Not Quite) Goodunuv

Tags

Boris, Boris Godunuv

 

The Death of Boris

Having sung ‘I have attained supreme power’, he joins the Chorus to sing ‘The Funeral Bell’ before expiring.

c Candia Dixon-Stuart 30/06/2016

Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem

Tags

All the world's a stage, Bankside, bum bags, Don Paterson TS Eliot prize, groundlings, Hercules, Hermione, Isle of Wight, Jeffrey Archer, London Bridge, plague, Reeboks, Shakespeare, Sir Smile, Southwark, Thames, The Globe, The Wooden O, Winchester geese, Winchester Palace

 

Forgot about this poem which appeared in the Spring Issue of

Poetry Life magazine, 1998.  It was printed on the back cover and

the front cover had a picture of Don Paterson who had just won the

TS Eliot Prize.  So, I was in good company!

With the current Shakespeare celebrations taking place, I thought

I’d better give it another airing.

It was written in July, 1997.

 

TOTUS MUNDUS AGIT HISTRIONEM*

 

(The Globe, July 1997)

 

No kite-picked, severed heads on London Bridge;

no barge with poop of beaten gold, or sails

of purple on the River Thames.  No screams

of baited bears at Bankside, nor whipped whores,

nor the crude cackling of Winchester geese**

by Southwark Bridge- perhaps the stink of drains.

No risk from rat flea plague.  No sign of swans.

But there’s that octagon, that wooden O,

with its fantastic gates and bearded thatch.

I cannot see that flag with Hercules

bearing the world upon his able back.

But, no doubt it is there, or it will be.

No Spaniards landing on the Isle of Wight,

and another Elizabeth still reigns.

It is required that we awake our faith,

for, down below, I see the lineaments

of that first audience, now in Reeboks,

sporting bum bags: a modern cod-piece? No?

It is the heretic that burns the fire;

not she that burns in it, Hermione

instructs the crowd who hears the Irish news.

Helicopters whirr and obscure some lines,

while programme sellers interrupt: Two pounds!

where a penny once secured standing room.

Thousands will trample Jeffrey Archer’s name;

his stone his hope of immortality.

The selfsame sun that shines upon his court

shines on our cottage, but now the dampness

releases the strong smell of new hewn oak.

I think I sense Will’s ghost behind my bench

and trace his footsteps in the dried blood sand.

There’s laughter at the antics of Sir Smile:

hundreds have the disease and feel it not.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust ,

but, as ever, mostly on the groundlings,

who hide their peccadilloes under macs;

on the surface, behave impeccably,

while the elevated in the tarrass

miss the jokes and fall asleep in Act 4,

proving that all is as it was before.

 

*All the world’s a stage

** Prostitutes associated with the area around Winchester

Palace, near The Globe

 

 

A Young Cockerel’s Stone

Tags

a cockerel's stone, Baz Luhrmann, David Cameron, Krapp's Last Tape, Lammas Tide, Lanzarote, Pele Tower, pigeon egg ruby, SamCam, selfie, The Nurse Romeo and Juliet, wet nurse, wormwood

Augustus Snodbury was very glad that he had made it to the end of term.

Virginia had been very happy with the pigeon’s egg ruby engagement

ring.  Personally, like Dru, he had thought it a tad vulgar- its stone of

proportions more like the bump on Susan’s head.

Susan?  I hear you query, Dear Reader.

Candia: Yes, the one who was/is with God.

Reader: I’m still no wiser.

Candia: Folk don’t seem to read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ now.  Even the kids

just watch the Baz Luhrmann film.  The Nurse’s child who died. 

You know, that was why the old gal could be a wet nurse.  Geddit?

Susan died when she fell and sustained a bump as big as a young

cockerel’s stone.

Reader: Stone?

Candia: Testicle to you.

Reader: Ah!  But what’s this to do with Virginia’s ring?   Oh, yes!

Anyway, Virginia had clearly thought it was no more than she

deserved, as she quoted The Book of Proverbs– the bit about a virtuous

woman’s price being above rubies.

Reader:  She is getting rather full of herself.

Candia: I agree.  I could make her fall off her stilettos, if you like. I needn’t

wait till Lammas Tide.

Male Reader: No, don’t do that.  We like to read about her ankles.  Do you

think she will fall backwards in the near future?

Candia:  Not so long as I can tease this sorry saga out!  But, at least, Gus

is not ‘a man of wax.’

Reader (of either gender-or even both): No, we think that phrase refers

to Nigel.

Candia:  Oh, don’t be too hard on Nigel.  He’s got enough on his plate. 

His mother is trying to create difficulties about the wedding.

Reader:  She has wormwood on her dug?

Candia:  Her dug is all right.  She’s prepared to check him into kennels

for the occasion. 

Reader:  Something is lost in translation here.

Candia:  It is just that she feels she is losing a son rather than gaining

a daughter-in-law.  She also thinks that she will have to hire a decorator

in future, as Nigel is bound to be more occupied as a married man.

Reader:  So where are they all, in their Easter holidays?

Candia: Snod and Virginia are with Diana and Murgatroyd in the

Borders, sorting out the guest lists and logistics, but Dru and Nigel

have taken themselves off to Lanzarote.  They bumped into David

Cameron the other day.  Dru took a selfie with SamCam and invited

her-and Dave- to the wedding(s).

Reader (impressed):  Did they accept?

Candia:  No, they politely responded with the equivalent of:  It is an

honour that we dream not of.

Reader:  He might be free by then. By the way, is Snod happier about

things now?

Candia:  I believe that he took Virginia’s hands and said:  ‘Perhaps

my best years are gone.  When there was a chance of happiness.  But

I  wouldn’t want them back.  Not with the fire in me now.’

Reader:  That’s from Krapp’s Last Tape and Embers.

Candia:  Typical. One of his obsessions. He always talks…you know…

stuff like:  ‘I can’t go on like this.’

Reader:  And then he does?

Candia:  Precisely.  But Virginia can handle him.  At least, I think she

can.

Virginia:  Yes, I can.